How New York City Could Reopen Its Economy, Neighborhood by Neighborhood
A geographically targeted approach to reopening could be less costly than blanket alternatives.
How New York City Could Reopen Its Economy, Neighborhood by NeighborhoodPaper Controlling Epidemic Spread: Reducing Economic Losses with Targeted Closures
Data on population movements can be helpful in designing targeted policy responses to curb epidemic spread. We study a spatial epidemic model, which explicitly accounts for population movements, and propose an optimization framework for obtaining targeted policies that restrict economic activity in different neighborhoods of a city at different levels. We focus on COVID-19 and calibrate our model using the mobile phone data that capture individuals’ movements within New York City (NYC). We show that appropriate targeting achieves a reduction in infections in all neighborhoods while resuming 23.1%–42.4% of the baseline non-teleworkable employment in NYC. By contrast, uniform (city-wide) restriction policies that achieve the same policy goal permit 3.92 to 6.25 times less non-teleworkable employment. Our targeting framework gives policy makers an approach for curbing the spread of epidemics while limiting unemployment.
- Authored by
- 2020
- Coronavirus
Read the Research in Chicago Booth Review